]]>https://caratireland.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/we-have-moved/feed/0caratirelandOur blog has moved back home to www.carat.ie/blogUPC Brings On Demand TV to Irelandhttps://caratireland.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/upc-brings-on-demand-tv-to-ireland/
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Last week UPC launched its groundbreaking new TV experience to its customers.

For the first time, this unique service offers customers the benefit of seven day catch-up TV from the RTÉ Player and 3player and over 1,300 hours of the best box sets and series for free. Additionally, Movies On-Demand is also available at the touch of a button.

Over one third of Dublin homes have instantly received the on demand service and it will roll out to the rest of the country throughout the summer to eventually reach 600,000 homes in Ireland.

Access to ITV, BBC and US box sets as well as the On Demand content from MGM, True Movies, Food Network, History and Discovery Channel will be available with further new programmes and content being added in the weeks ahead. Additionally, there are complete box sets of award winning US TV, such as Blue Bloods, The Good Wife and Dexter among others – available free of charge to UPC Select and Max customers through their UPC digital remote.

UPC has negotiated with the top Hollywood studios to allow customers to rent from hundreds of movies, including the latest box office hits, directly through their TV at the touch of a button. UPC will provide the latest release movies at the same time as they are available on DVD.

The on demand movies are very likely to pose yet further problems for Xtravision’s already struggling business model. We would anticipate an increased push behind their postal subscription service, although this still has nowhere near the ease of functionality that UPC is offering and does not provide a substantial cost saving.

The greater issue from a media planning point of view is the catch up TV service will most likely further fragment the viewing of TV as viewers also avail ofonline broadcast programme options.

Any viewers watching a programme on the catch up service rather than the TV broadcast (including anyone who recorded the programme and watched it later) will no longer be picked up by Nielsen as a TV viewer.

This will inevitably lead to a reduction in Nielsen monitored TV viewing – when fully rolled out the on demand service will be available in almost 40% of all homes. Any reduction in monitored ad impressions will mean reduced supply for RTÉ and TV3 and may lead to price inflation (assuming demand does not reduce further than supply).

However, the viewers will not be lost; they will simply be watching the programme on a different feed. They will even be watching it on the same television set – as far as the viewer is concerned they are just watching the programme they want to watch on their TV, they will have no concept of which “feed” has supplied it.

Currently the catch up service does not carry advertising but the intention is that it will in the same manner as the online and mobile versions. The increased inventory the catch up service will provide for RTÉ and TV3 should also lead to deflation for “player” advertising be it either through straight reduction in cost per thousands or through the development of more optimized packages.

What we know for sure is that once the service is carrying advertising it will become even more important to ensure “player” advertising is incorporated into broadcast media plans since it will further blur the lines for the viewer about where they watch their TV and make it more about what they watch.

Chris Nolan – Director

As always, if you have any opinions- supporting or conflicting- on this post or related matters we’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to post replies below

The oft maligned newspaper industry has frequently been accused of being (for want of a better term), “yesterday’s news” but, in the UK at least, positive steps appear to have been made this past week to address the evolving environment that newspapers are currently in.

The Newspaper Marketing Agency (UK) has rebranded itself as Newsworks. Their core objective is to “help advertisers and agencies harness the power of national ‘newsbrands’ – in all their forms – to achieve their communication objectives”. It is funded by six national newspaper groups in the UK including Guardian News & Media, Independent Print Limited, Mail Newspapers, Mirror Group Newspapers, News International and Telegraph Media Group. The organisation provides a range of services including research, case studies, creative benchmarking and training.

So what is the reason for the rebrand? As Roy Greenslade highlighted in his Guardian blog this past Monday, the rebrand is “indicative of the changed landscape of the news industry”, i.e. the ways in which people consume and engage with news content are changing before our very eyes. The new reality for publishers is that while consumer appetite for news and entertainment has not dwindled, the platforms through which content is consumed has changed dramatically. The advent of mobile technology via smart phone and tablet has made accessing information on-the-go much easier and is actively contributing to a change in the consumption patterns of news and entertainment content. Although print circulations are in decline, the printed product is still obviously a huge part of the mix for ‘newsbrands’ but it is (and will continue to be) just that, a single part of a multi platform offering.

Rebranding their marketing body as Newsworks is a clear sign that the UK industry has accepted this new reality. Just take a minute to look at the actual name, Newsworks. It is a clear signal that the definition of the newspaper publisher is being redefined. Publishers or newsbrands can no longer be defined solely on the production of a daily printed product. At their core, they are providers of content, whether it covers news, lifestyle, entertainment or sport. Newsbrands still have huge influence within society and have the innate ability to generate debate amongst both the general public and rival media. According to Newsworks, in the UK, although the methods of content consumption and distribution of newsbrands content is becoming more varied, the rate at which people are beginning to access newsbrands on digital platforms is increasing faster than print readership is contracting. This is clear evidence that the core offering from newsbrands is still relevant, important and being actively sought out by consumers.

The future for what we used to term ‘newspapers’ is clear. It is now time to embrace it.

CELEBRATE
Taking the new globally-developed Lucozade masterbrand positioning and making it contextually relevant and engaging at a local level.

THE CHALLENGE
Our challenge was to rapidly establish the new Lucozade promise brought to life through the “YES” messaging, and to contextualise its deeper meaning into the DNA of each individual brand. All the individual brand communications could then ladder up to a stronger Lucozade “voice”.

THE INSIGHT
The Lucozade brand had high levels of awareness and appeal, particularly among its core young male customers, but needed to make the Lucozade masterbrand positioning clear and relevant to their world. The most valuable consumers were ‘now activists’ – ruled by sociability, symbols and newness. Finding, absorbing and sharing content first was highly motivating for them. And no brand in the soft drinks category was delivering this.

THE IDEA
The big idea was simply to treat the launch not as an ad campaign, but rather the release of new content. The campaign was launched through a planned eco-system of activity, which defined the type and depth of communications we wanted to take place. This framework allowed us to prescribe the energy-flow behind each media channel’s role at each stage of the customer response to the campaign, rather than simply
stating which channels to buy. Within the eco-system, every piece of activity has an effect on everything else within it, ensuring early pull-through from our now
activists. Lucozade’s eco-system had 3 key areas that had to integrate and relate to one another to ensure a cohesive launch behind the new brand promise. The purpose of each phase was to generate consumer expression, not impressions, primarily judged by the success of the new Facebook profile.

The three phases were:

SEED

DISTRIBUTE

AMPLIFY

1. SEED
The basis of this was to launch in a big way, but in very select environments, leveraging the viral nature of our core consumers.
2. DISTRIBUTE
We made an event of the days around the launch day by dominating all key channels (including roadblocking the entry points to social media, solus ad breaks and multiple video news releases across TV, extensive use of online video ads and specific movie targeting in cinemas).
3. AMPLIFY
We switched to a higher frequency of different ad executions across TV and online video. Media partnerships provided new and exclusive content for Lucozade, which was published through the Facebook profile allowing our now activists to get this to their peers ahead of anyone else.

THE RESULTS

Our success is measured by the high number of most valuable consumers we are regularly engaging with “YES” through our Facebook profile. Within 6 months we went from 0 – 33,000 members, which was also the highest number of an Irish Facebook profile page within the CSD category. The profile was also ranked within the top 30 of Irish profiles within this time period. While these standard industry measures demonstrated massive success, the deeper social media expression measures were even more impressive. The activity achieved an interaction rate five times the industry average and an unlike rate a third of the general marketplace.

For more examples of great media work, you can get in touch with me on 01 271 2139

Ciaran Cunningham – CEO

As always, if you have any opinions- supporting or conflicting- on this post or related matters we’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to post replies below.

UPC are increasing their offering this week with the launch of three new RTÉ Digital channels. RTÉ One+1 launched on Tuesday the 13th March while RTÉ Two HD and RTÉjr, their children’s offering, launch today, Thursday 15th March. The new channels will be available to all UPC Digital customers. SKY will carry RTE One+1 and RTEjr from May.

RTÉ Two HD will be a big draw for sports fans, broadcasting the RBS 6 Nations triple header this Saturday as well as Champions League games, key GAA championship fixtures and many more key sporting events across the year in high definition. RTÉjr will carry no advertising during preschool hours of 8:30am and 15:15. The channel will simulcast RTÉ2 until 15:15 and will then run on a loop until 19:00 when RTEOne+1 will kick in. As with the RTÉ player, Fair City will not be broadcast on RTÉ One+1 due to rights issues so the channel will be blank over this period.

“UPC is committed to bringing our customers the best possible Digital TV service and we are the only pay-TV provider to carry the RTÉ One+1 (EPG 107), RTÉ Two HD (EPG 135) and RTÉjr (EPG 600) channels,” said Simon Kelehan, head of TV, UPC. “The addition of these channels to our digital package offers our customers more television choice than ever before.”

Currently these channels are not tracked by Nielsen, however RTE One+1 is due to be monitored in the next 4 weeks with the other 2 having data in the next 6 weeks.

Until now RTÉ One +1, RTÉ Two HD and RTÉjr were only available to the 49,000 Saorview homes. The latest Nielsen data estimates 340,000 UPC Digital homes.

RTE One +1, RTE Two HD and RTEjr are available to Saorview customers at present, which translates to 49,000 homes. The latest Nielsen data estimates that there are a further 340,000 UPC Digital homes who can now benefit from these latest offerings.

Sarah Murphy – Broadcast Director

As always, if you have any opinions- supporting or conflicting- on this post or related matters we’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to post replies below

Carat recently partnered with IAB and Amarach research to try to gain a greater understanding into the habits of TV viewers while they’re watching TV. As we all suspected, TV viewers are spending rather a lot of time online while simultaneously watching TV, so our research was designed to quantify the extent to which this was happening and to dig a bit deeper into what’s now known as “media meshing” or “second screening”

The research showed that an impressive 78% of TV viewers go online while watching TV. Even more interesting were our findings into what they’re doing online while watching TV. While the majority (53%) are social networking, 40% are doing their banking and 34% are on Google looking for information or just surfing in general. In fact, social networking has been frequently credited with encouraging a revival of certain TV programmes, as viewers simultaneously engage with programmes via Twitter and Facebook, notice the number of programmes currently running with hashtags promoted on screen.

Interestingly for advertisers, 1 in 5 who are online while watching TV are actively searching for brands or information on brands they have seen on TV, making it important for advertisers to upweight search budgets around TV advertising. In addition, a high proportion of those surveyed are also searching online for the TV commercials they’ve seen or the music within these commercials. YouTube is the first place they go to try to find commercials, making YouTube an increasingly important channel as a support for TV.

This clearly showed that the effectiveness of TV campaigns can be amplified through complimentary online activity. Canny advertisers should be looking at other ways to drive interactions now, including but not limited to; treating youtube as a search engine, much like Google, to help distribute the message, and looking for improved methods of engagement like Shazam, if the music is catchy, or perhaps incorporating a twitter presence into sponsorship. To name just a few.

This research was published in conjunction with IAB Ireland and the full presentation is available here, or you can get in touch with us here at Carat to receive a copy of the full report.

The latest video from the band OK Go was released online on the 4th February and has already reached over 16,000,000 total views on YouTube as well as hundreds of blog posts and almost hundreds of thousands of Facebook shares.

They are most famous musically for their song “Get Over It” released in 2003, but their real fame came from their intricate music videos all filmed in one shot starting with “Here it Goes Again” which they also performed live at the MTV Awards in 2006.

From that point on they have been a shining example of how effective the digital world is at distributing good content.

Their most successful video to date is for “This too shall pass” featuring a Rube Goldberg machine designed and built by the band over the course of several months.To date it has had 34,000,000 views on YouTube, 1,900,000 shares on Facebook and 8,700 blog posts.

They are no strangers to partnering with brands- as the current video (which was made in partnership with Chevrolet) shows, and their incredibly impressive video for “All is not lost” which can only be properly viewed using Google’s Chrome browser.

Their use of digital for distribution is excellent and now the words “new video from OK Go” are enough to garner several million views within a number of days. But this is entirely due to the quality of the work. Every video has been expertly crafted (despite an intentionally very amateur feel to them) and have all had an inordinate amount of work and planning put into them.

If you build it, they will come – so long as what you build is impressive and people enjoy watching it.

We stand at the beginning of what we believe will be a year of amazing challenge and
opportunity, not just for media itself, but also for the way in which businesses and brands
communicate with their customers.

There is much to look forward to across the Irish media landscape. The digital TV
switchover will finally happen in late October, bringing another 1 in 4 of the population
into the market for additional broadcast options on SKY, UPC or Saorview. Netflix, the US
movie streaming service, has already added more choices to Irish households and we will
also see the arrival of a new video-on-demand service from UPC.

Social media continues to spread its tentacles across the Irish media market. This is now
being accompanied by the explosive growth of mobile as a media channel in its own right,
thanks to the adoption of the smartphone by over one-third of Irish mobile users and the
advent of the ‘branded app’ as another route to engage.

As the lines between ‘new’ and ‘old’ media blur, other media owners will also be keen to
grab their share of the digital dividend that has seen spending across online media rise by
over 20% in 2011.

Of course, there will be major challenges for all stakeholders along the way. The market
will be watching to see the impact of the demise of share trading by RTÉ.
Of greater concern are the plans for imposed legislation designed to curtail the promotion
of alcohol, alongside a growing lobby for taxes on foods containing sugar and fats, which
could have longer term consequences for indigenous and international brands alike.
All of these developments will happen within the context of a harsh economic climate for
people living and working here and the calamitous state of the eurozone. Ireland is still
going through an unprecedented fiscal crisis that is affecting every individual, household
and business to some degree.

Advertising and commercial activity thrives on optimism and we are optimistic that there
are many brand owners, media channel providers and agencies like ourselves with the
enthusiasm, creative spirit and strategic capabilities to help the local economy to grow
again.

Carat expects media spending to stabilise in 2012 and we are forecasting a modest
decline of 2% to an annual spend of €753 million with some media naturally doing better
than others. As we outline in this edition of our annual media forecast, there have never
been more opportunities to plan, act and engage with customers through the new and
established range of media channels in creative and original ways. As Ireland’s largest
media agency, be assured that Carat is committed to harnessing its range of Irish and
international resources to ensure that our clients reinvent new ways to build their brands
through media in 2012.

We hope you find the full document useful. If you wish to discuss any of the topics raised,
please call me on 01 271 2139.

Best wishes for the year ahead.

Ciaran Cunningham – Chief Executive

As always, if you have any opinions- supporting or conflicting- on this post or related matters we’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to post replies below.

After many months of speculation, Rupert Murdoch and News International announced today that the organisation will make a return to the Sunday tabloid market with the launch of the Irish Sun Sunday edition. The first edition of the new title will launch this Sunday, 26th February.

After Rupert Murdoch was initially quoted as saying that the launch would be “very soon”, the announcement that the first issue will launch this coming weekend has still caught the industry by surprise. Quoted in the Irish Sun on Monday (20th February), Mr.Murdoch states that “We will build on The Sun’s proud heritage by launching The Sun on Sunday…I am even more determined to see The Sun continue to fight for its readers and its beliefs.” Whether the shareholders of News Corporation will display such enthusiasm for this launch remains to be seen, as many have called for the newspaper division of the company to be sold off, particularly in light of the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World last year. What it does demonstrate is Rupert Murdoch’s determination and belief in the power of The Sun and newspapers as a whole. Even more so considering the timing of the launch, as it comes amidst the Operation Elveden investigation and being just over six months since the closure of the News of the World. Murdoch has always been known as a “newspaper man” and his determination to re-enter the Sunday tabloid market is yet further proof of this.

In an Irish context, the launch of the Irish Sun this Sunday will present News International with a serious challenge. The Sunday newspaper market has shown further decline in 2011, with Sunday readership now at 63% of all adults in 2011 vs. 69% of all adults in 2010 . With the demise of the Irish News of the World last July, the majority of its readers did not switch to another newspaper, as the only rival title to see any kind of uplift in readers was the Irish Sunday Mirror, which saw an increase of +40,000 readers. The challenge for the Irish Sun on Sunday will be firstly to bring Irish Sun readers across to the new Sunday version and also to see whether they can recruit any of the lapsed Irish News of the World readership. Neither should be taken as a given in the current market but it should be interesting to see. At the very least, it will help to bring some energy back into the Irish newspaper market and, hopefully, generate additional competition between rival publishers in delivering value to readers and advertisers.

This year the broadcasters have been busy releasing their new spring schedules with each station promising to offer viewers something unique and different. We explore what’s really on offer from each of the stations.

RTÉ’s spring schedule is quite traditional, with some highlights, but once again I think they have forgotten about their younger audience and have failed to schedule against the digital offerings in the Irish market. RTÉ 1 delivered no surprises with shows like Raw, Supergarden and The Saturday Night Show all returning. New shows include Saving the Titanic, an international co-production to mark the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and Ireland Outside the Euro, a documentary that explores exactly what it says on the tin.

Bankers such as The Late Late Show, Operation Transformation and Mrs Browns Boys all remain in the schedule. Over on RTÉ2, US dramas like Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy are present but with Living showing Grey’s ahead of RTÉ and Channel 4 showing Desperate Housewives in the same week they don’t still hold the same appeal. New US sitcom 2 Broke Girls launched in January but with disappointing results, only attracting an average of 29,000 MC A15-34 over the first two weeks. Sport continues to play a big role on RTÉ2 with both Premier Soccer Saturday and The Six Nations airing.

TV3 launched their schedule together with the cast of all their hit shows in the convention centre on the 26th of January. Home productions continue to play a key role for RTÉ, relying heavily on reality shows and documentaries. Come dine with me Ireland returns to our screens in spring with new reality shows including Tallafornia, Southside Housewives, Hen Nights and The Great Irish Bake-Off. Other highlights include Mastermind and the return of the new series of Dallas which should attract both the older and younger audiences.

TV3 are eager to get some big rating pullers into their schedule throughout the year instead of having to rely on shows like X factor and The Apprentice in Q4 which performed disappointingly for them last year. While I am not sure that they have cracked it with any of the above, I do think they will appeal to a mixed audience and will help broaden the profile of the station.

Elsewhere, SKY announced Irish advertising opt outs for 3 new channels – At The Races in January, SKY Living +1 in February and SKY 2 in March. Highlights across SKY include the return of Next Top Model on Living, the start of Friday Night Lights on Atlantic and Spartacus: Vengeance will run on SKY1.

So do we think the above is enough to put an end of the viewing slump all stations experienced at the beginning of the year? I don’t feel like any station has the “next big thing” in their schedules but who would have thought that Mrs. Browns Boys would attract 2 million more viewing on BBC than Jonathan Ross interviewing David Beckham on ITV. I do think the schedules offer increased Irish home produced content and new shows to the market which will appeal to a diverse audience. With several places for viewers to be able to watch TV content now, it is important that the broadcasters continue to offer something unique to viewers.